Hazard zones and hired hands: the Crucible Guard gears up

Hazard zones and hired hands: the Crucible Guard gears up

If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to turn your opponent’s deployment zone into a chemistry set, today’s your day.

The Crucible Guard are getting a new wave of reinforcements from the Midfast Foundry, and this time, Gearhart’s the one calling the shots.

Today’s TL;DR:

• New pre-orders here today: Crucible Guard Auxiliary Expansion and Gorman di Wulfe, Revolutionary Agent
  

• Out now: Crucible Guard Defences - deploy an alchemical hazard zone
  

• Take to the skies today: The Crucible Guard Core Expansion is now available as a physical set and digital STLs

Reinforcements from the Midfast Foundry

If the Core Expansion is the Crucible Guard’s backbone, the Auxiliary Expansion is the part where the Order starts opening the special armoury. That is, if the Marshal General hasn’t ransacked it already for his own enjoyment.

Packed with specialist personnel, armoured infantry, and mutated Failed Experiments that turn a battlefield into a viscera cleanup operation. The Crucible Guard Auxiliary Expansion deploys more ways to make your opponent regret meddling in the affairs of the Order of the Golden Crucible.

Marshal General Baldwin Gearhart

A Cygnaran-born mercenary warcaster, Marshal General Baldwin Gearhart has made a career of fighting and has enjoyed every moment along the way. He is never happier than when facing long odds and overwhelming numbers—much to the exasperation of his ever-suffering porter, whom he insists on calling “Mr. Clogg.” 

Gearhart’s feat is Fox Hunt, marking targets within his control range as prey, allowing his compatriots to increase damage and enact a swift takedown before promptly seeking the next target. 

But that’s not all, Gearhart’s personal weapons porter Mr. Clogg allows for quick weapon swaps to suit many different threats, from caustic Acid Cannons to freezing Cryo-Evaporators.

Mr Clogg

Don't pop your clogs just yet, unless you're Gearhart, in which case, they're expendable.

Not every asset of the Crucible Guard is there to look heroic. In Mr. Clogg's case he’s a walking, talking personal arsenal for the Marshal General. Clogg provides firepower in the form of being Gearhart’s Johnny on the spot, but most of all, he’s there to be the butt of every one of Gearhart’s wisecracks. Hold my cannon, Clogg.

Failed Experiments

Alchemy can be a messy art, a fact known by the Order of the Golden Crucible more than many other scientists in the Iron Kingdoms. The Crucible Guard isn’t shy about human experimentation, which has led to several messy failures over the years. However, not every failed attempt results in disintegration or a sentient mass of quivering flesh. Some subjects instead become bestial, monstrous, and highly destructive, their bodies warped by the unstable serum. 

Like loyal canines, these failed experiments are given simple commands and sent howling at the enemies of the Crucible Guard, unleashing unimaginable havoc.

Containment Operatives

Containment Operatives are the professionals you send in when something’s escaped the lab, and you’d really rather it didn’t escape the battlefield too.

They’ll lob canisters from long-range projectors, punching shots deep into enemy ranks like they’re testing reactions in a crowded lab. If their aim’s true, the results are nasty, colourful, and safely recorded from a distance.

Crucible Guard Assault Troopers

These are the Guard’s boots-on-the-ground bruisers, built to advance through smoke and shrapnel and keep coming. They trust their armour and alchemical masks to get them through the worst of the caustic chemicals. Then the thermal hammers come down. Each one’s got a nasty little two-part compound in the head that kicks off an extreme exothermic reaction, heating the weapon to blistering temperatures.

Crucible Guard Storm Troopers

Storm Troopers are the Guard’s brutal counterpunch, the unit you send in when you want a section of the battlefield to stop being occupied. Their pneumatic concussion cannons are made for applying pressure, breaking up packed infantry, and clearing tight spaces like bunkers and trenches, where every intervening foe gets a pick axe to the noggin.

Hutchuk, Ogrun Bounty Hunter

Hutchuk turns up when there’s a price on someone’s head and a battlefield full of targets. With a bandolier full of alchemical grenades, Hutchuk can instil a dizzying amount of opportunistic effects upon his bounty, knocking them to the floor, silencing spellcasting, or rusting away pristine armour.

Trancer

Trancers fight like an unstable weapon mid-detonation. When they cut loose, they’ll pour everything into one nasty, mind-splitting surge that hurts your enemies and themselves.

Liberator / Retaliator / Vanguard

This warjack kit is the Guard’s pragmatic brilliance in miniature: one chassis, multiple ways to ruin someone’s day. The Light Warjack chassis is derived from the Vanguard line. This flexible kit contains parts to build a Retaliator, Liberator, or Vanguard, giving you access to their full rulesets and battlefield roles.

Doctor Alejandro Mosby

Every great army has someone who keeps the wheels turning. The Crucible Guard have Doctor Mosby, and he’s exactly as unsettlingly calm as you’d expect from someone surrounded by volatile mixtures and battlefield casualties.

Pick your potion. Fire at will. Gorman di Wulfe, Revolutionary Agent

There are rogues… and then there’s Gorman di Wulfe: a former member of the Order of the Golden Crucible turned resistance fighter, and persona non grata among most of the Order’s leadership, Gorman remains a valuable asset to both the Crucible Guard and anyone willing to employ his services.

If Di Wulfe’s not plundering a Crucible Guard alchemist’s cache for ingredients, then he’s sampling his latest concoction on the battlefield.

Amidst the caustic smog, smiling like a madman behind his thick gas mask, mercenary Gorman Di Wulf, Revolutionary Agent, is at your service.

A masked madman with a pocket full of potions

That mask isn’t just for show. Gorman wades through choking fumes like he owns the air itself. The mad alchemist’s latest choice of arms is his experimental bomb launcher, Gorman’s now turning the battlefield into a guessing game of hazardous payloads, each warhead loaded into the tube with an unmistakable *thunk* and slosh of bubbling fluids.

Pick your flavour of catastrophe

And tailor it to whatever poor soul has just become the subject of his latest mixture.

Black Humor

Panic settles in fast once a victim realises the viscous fluid of Black Humor is rapidly melting away at their armour. Calling a medic is futile, as this thick concoction makes even the toughest enemies weak and unable to heal.

Experimental Warhead

This one’s a gift-wrapped disaster: fire and corrosion, working in tandem. Armour hisses, skin blisters, and whatever’s left will crumble and melt.

Spontaneous Combustion

Gorman’s glorious coup de grace and party trick is making his enemies disappear in a puff of smoke. 

Of course, the best elements are combustible. Gorman’s spontaneous combustible payload feeds the reaction of elements until it becomes a single, decisive moment of mayhem. An eruption that rewards his test subject with the conclusion: death.

WANTED: Test subjects

Is your nation having trouble with pesky raiders? Worried your neighbour is experimenting with dark rituals? Or perhaps you’re a resident of Skell with a disdain for Cygnar blue? Look no further, Gorman di Wulfe, Revolutionary Agent, is taking on all volunteers, and his services are available for hire today.

Also now available: Crucible Guard Core Expansion (with a quick digital note)

Haven’t you heard? The rocketeers are in town! The Crucible Guard Core Expansion is here, and right now you can get it in physical or as digital STLs over on MyMiniFactory.

Quick heads-up for MyMiniFactory STL collectors: the digital Crucible Guard Auxiliary Expansion will not include the Light Warjack. That kit (and its build options) is available in the Digital Battlegroup Box, alongside Aurum Adeptus Syvestro and the Heavy Warjack with its build options.

And here’s a hobby upgrade we’re really chuffed about: The physical and digital Crucible Guard Core Expansion doesn't use transparent flight stands. Instead, you get smoke plumes to hold the flying models up, and they look properly cinematic once you’ve got some smoky colour on them.

Laboratorize your battlefield

Ever wanted to fortify your positions with hardened barricades and sparking voltaic fire pits? Perhaps your battlefield alchemists require a disposal mulcher when the budget only allows for a spike trap?

Fear not! The Crucible Guard’s endless ingenuity strikes again. Built for an army forged in laboratories and tested in live fire, the Crucible Guard Defenses set brings the look of Midfast’s battlefield science straight to your tabletop. Get your defenses today and start scheming.

Show us your hazard zones

If you’re jumping in this week, tell us what you’re most excited for. Are you upgrading your army with the Auxiliary Expansion, building a fortified line with the Crucible’s Defenses, or handing Gorman a bag of bombs and seeing what happens?

And if you paint any of it, show us on the new Warmachine Discord. Come join, we want to see the smoke plumes, the hazard stripes, the scorched bases, and the glorious alchemical chaos.